


Summer Child

by WearingOutWinter



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/F, Love Triangle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-21 23:21:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2485964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WearingOutWinter/pseuds/WearingOutWinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny knows all the flavors of summer. But she isn't quite sure which one will prevail this year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer Child

Summer. It is the season of ice cream, fireflies, and beach trips. The season of school break and nothing good on television. And that's all, to most people. But Danny knows summer much better. After all, she was born to it.

She knows that summer is eternal. It is days so long as to be everlasting, nights so short as to be imagined. It is rivers warmed by sunlight and bright blue, cloudless skies. It is wine, heavy and heady, best tasted on a loved one's lips. It is languid kisses on the neck and sheets soaked through with sweat. It is the season of gardens, of poets, of the easy life.

Danny knows that summer is fleeting. It is the golden pinnacle, midway between spring's tottering youth and autumn's trembling age. It is the buzz of dragonflies and the trill of birds. It is the clatter of hooves and the hum of the bow-shot and the howl of hounds in the undergrowth. It is yellow eyes, glimpsed at a dead run under a crescent moon. It is starlight on spear-points and ringing horns and the triumphant blood of the fresh kill. It is the season of hunters, of prey, of victory.

She knows that summer is gentle. It is sun-dappled clearings and willows trailing their limbs in ponds. It is the breeze in treetops and stones skipped across flat lakes. It is fingers brushed through silky hair and kisses in the warm rain. It is picnics on hilltops and wishes together on falling stars. It is flower crowns placed upon one another's heads. It is the season of peace, of songs, of love.

It is what she feels every time Laura smiles at her.

But Danny knows that summer is brutal. It is bone dry watering holes and lizards baked to death on rocks. It is swarms of locusts and clouds of flies. It is the dust-storm and the monsoon and the wild fire. It is the homestead put to the torch and the fever that festers in the well. It is the season of sickness, of madness, of murder.

It is what she feels every time Carmilla smiles at Laura. It makes her wish she could open her fist and show the creature of the night the unshrouded glory of the summer sun.  Danny doesn't give a damn how fast the vampire is, give her a weapon and a steed worthy of her season, and she will r ide her down and bring back her head.

I t isn't just that Carmilla pursues Laura. Everything about her shrieks betrayer, enemy,  _unseelie_ .

S he knows that Carmilla has never set foot in Faerie. But  even so, she s tinks of winter and decay and slow death,  all the scents tha t curl Danny's fingers into fists.  The vampire hardly has to do anything, and summer is clawing at Danny's throat, begging to be unleashed.

But whenever she's teetering on the edge, Laura's there,  smiling like the sun. And then, summer purrs in Danny's belly.

She doesn't know which summer will win out, in the end. It could be swift and terrible. But then, it could be sweet and slow.  That's the nature of her season. And for all that Carmilla sulks and declares that this modern era understands nothing of obligation, Danny knows what it is to be loyal (to her season. To her society. To her court.) and she will not turn away.

Perhaps Carmilla will respect that, and even between the two of them, summer might be green and peaceful.

But Danny doubts it.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So... this is the result of me watching the entire series up to the current point in one Saturday afternoon and then becoming convinced that all the "Danny is a werewolf" speculation was barking up the wrong tree. So to speak. 
> 
> I'm not totally happy with it, but mostly I wanted to get it posted before a new episode comes out and inevitably Josses it.


End file.
